People that cut their own hay

alsxx

alsxx

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For those of you that cut your own hay, or have people in that cut hay off of your fields, what are the average costs involved in doing this? And how many small bales of hay can you get per acre?

The field that I rent is approx 6 acres, and I rotate the horses round so they have a summer and winter field. I'm just wondering if its worth investigating the possibility of having hay cut off of the top (winter) half - approx 2 1/2 - 3 acres - the benefit to me by doing this would be I know the hay would be weed and ragwort free and it would be 'on site' so no need to buy it in every winter - so what I need to try and work out is if I would get enough bales out of it to equal the cost of paying someone to do it to roughly the average price of a bale i buy at the moment (£3 - £4).

Thoughts please!
 
Assuming you don't have any of the machinery yourself I'd contact you're local contractor/farmer and ask them how much they charge, what the yield may be etc? You would need to give it a bit of fertilizer to get the best yeild possible I'd think. If memory serves me right we got enough hay off 3 acres for 3 horses for the winter. I know our supplier only got 6 big round bales (haylage) an acre this year as opposed to 10+ bales last year. To give you some idea - we have a contractor to do big bales. We paid £9 to have it cut, baled, wrapped and led. Don't know of any haylage in the area for under £15. So we think it's worth doing it.
 
My OH is a contractor and would charge £1 a bale for haymaking. This would include mowing, turning, rowing up and baling, leaving you to get them in yourself. If you wanted it stacked, that would cost extra. You would expect to get approx 100 bales per acre. If you only wanted say one acre made, then he would probably charge more as it would not be worth doing otherwise.

The OH is a one man band, a large scale contractor who has a lot of folks working for them would probably charge more.

Your best bet would be to ask local farmers if they would consider fitting yours in with their own.
 
Wow 100 bales per acre is loads!!

That sounds quite worthwhile doing as I could sell some on as I would never need 200-300 bales of hay!! Before I moved in the owners had a local farmer in who cut the whole field for big bale hay, sadly I can't really store big bales, but small bales I can! I may ask around. Thanks that's been really useful.
 
I had my three acre field cut for hay this year
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Had it done in September, the grass was very long, it has grown back fabulous; I've just put the ponies on it.

I gave it all to my neighbour who paid £300 to get done just as marmalade76 describes !! (she gets through 3 bales a day, Yikes!!!)

My ponies live out most of the time, only coming in for a few hours every day so I only use a few bales a month, although I can help myself when I need some.

We had to move it from the field into her barn which took five of us five hours, but the hay is fab.
We managed to get 250 bales
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Having hay cut off of half the field would be doing me a favour just in terms of having the grass cut! I have so much of it here, and its great being able to rotate them round, but I am yet to do it as there is still plenty of grass down the bottom half. I'm not feeding hay yet and doubt I will be for quite some time.

Do you think any farmer would be interested in cutting it and taking it all apart from say 50 bales, instead of charging me? That way they can sell it all on themselves and probably make more money that way? I'm only really interested in getting it cut so that I dont end up with a rainforest for them to go into come winter, and obviously getting a small supply of hay off it is a bonus as I dont have to worry about trying to find some.
 
marmalade76 that is very cheap!

We paid £3 for big bale and raking (as contractor insisted our tedder wasn't big enough)

I suspect it depends where you are an if you are handy for a contractor, but I know around us it would cost more than £1 per small bale for all the work involved.
 
I do this with my 'spare' field.

Last yr I got enough to last all winter at 80p/bale, not inc. the fertiliser costs.
This yr I didn't get so many and they worked out £1.50/bale.
It had to be turned more, which bumped the price up, plus the yield was low.

It won't last me all winter but as the going rate around here is £4/bale, I'm still quids in for the moment.

I'll buy in big bale haylage as needs be later on.

Only down side to making your own is you develop weather phobia!! And then there's the getting in and storing of it all. Took me and OH 'till 2am this yr to get it all under cover before forecasted rain arrived..
 
[ QUOTE ]

Do you think any farmer would be interested in cutting it and taking it all apart from say 50 bales, instead of charging me? That way they can sell it all on themselves and probably make more money that way? I'm only really interested in getting it cut so that I dont end up with a rainforest for them to go into come winter, and obviously getting a small supply of hay off it is a bonus as I dont have to worry about trying to find some.

[/ QUOTE ]

My OH would be interested in a deal like this, but only in the right area, obviously, so I think it would be worth asking around. He pays up to £40 per acre for good grass.

CotswoldSJ, he hasn't done any haymaking for anyone else in the last 3/4 years. He buys the grass and makes it for himself to sell to keep us over the winter, so maybe a review of pricing is in order, what with deisel going up so much! Where abouts in Glos are you?



 
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